3 Blogging Legal Nightmares That Actually Happened

In seven short days, it will be Halloween. But while the the ghosts practice their moaning and the werewolves sharpen their fangs, I’m reminded of an old maxim that nothing is more frightening than a scary story that happens to be true.

So, in honor of the year’s scariest holiday, I’m going to cover three legal nightmares that happened to otherwise unsuspecting bloggers.

While these probably won’t happen to you, it’s important to remember that the legal system can be a scary place at times and, as a blogger, you run the risk of being thrown into it in a major way.

1. UK Blogger Sued in Australia for Libel

Back in 2009, video game blogger Bruce Everiss investigated the company Evony LLC, which back then was best known for its overtly sexual ads for its online game of the same name.

Everiss’ accusations against the company were varied and weighty in nature. According to Everiss, he learned that Evony LLC, though technically a company registered in the U.S., was involved with Chinese gold-farming companies, that the company infringed the IP of the game Civilization for its game and stole images to create its notorious ads. Everiss also implied that Evony’s client was malware.

The reason Evony LLC did this was due to something called forum shopping. Australia has notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel laws and, if Evony LLC could show that their reputation was harmed in the region, they had a decent shot at winning, especially since there was no practical way for Everiss to defend himself. Even worse, once Evony obtained a verdict in Australia they might have been able to file litigation in the UK to to collect on any judgment they received.

Though Evony LLC said that decision was due to “criticism” from gamers over the lawsuit, though others speculate it’s because Evony LLC didn’t want the attention to the lawsuit to overshadow the launch of it’s sequel “Evony Age II”.

Although this case ended well, for over half a year, Everiss was staring down the barrel of a case he couldn’t hope to win and only avoided due to public pressure.

2. Blogger Learns He may not “Own” His Followers

In 2010, Noah Kravitz left his job as editor-in-chief and blogger at PhoneDog, a website dedicated to mobile phone reviews. During his time at the company, he had started up a Twitter account, @PhonedogNoah, that he maintained. However, when he left the company, he changed his name to @NoahKravitz and, according to Kravitz, he had an arrangement with PhoneDog to let him keep the account under certain conditions.

However, in 2011 PhoneDog sued Kravitz, saying in part that the follower list could be considered a “customer list” and the company sought damages of $2.50 per follower, per month. This amounted to approximately $340,000 for the 17,000 plus followers Kravitz had built up.

Gordon returned to Thailand after 30 years in the U.S. While there, he posted a link on his blog to an “unauthorized biography” of the king and was arrested ounder the country’s lèse-majesté law, which protects the monarchy against defamation, insults and threats with criminal penalties of up to 20 years.

The case reminds us that, while laws may prevent criminal prosecution of defamatory speech in the U.S. and elsewhere, such laws are not universal and, in some cases, speaking ill of someone, in particular someone in power, can land you in jail.

Bottom Line

To be clear, these are extreme scenarios that are very unlikely under normal blogging situations. If you do your best to blog in an ethical way, you probably won’t find yourself in a lawsuit, let alone a legal nightmare of this caliber.

That being said, it’s important to note that the legal system can be unfair and can put you in extreme situations, such as being sued in a foreign country, not owning your followers or even being arrested for insulting a king.

These are the risks you take by running a blog and posting online. You expose yourself to the entirety of the world and that includes both the best and the worst of its people and of its legal systems. To make matters worse, the newness of the Web means that, in many places, the law has not caught up and can produce legal cases and situations that feel out of touch with the technology.

It’s a brave new world and while it can be a beautiful one to explore, it can be dangerous as well. Never forget that.

Jonathan Bailey founded and continues to write at Plagiarism Today, a site about content theft and copyright issues on the internet. He also manages CopyByte, a company that protects online content, and writes a regular column for BloggingPro.